Summer’s here! Probably, most people are all packed-up and ready for their holiday vacation. It may be a trip to an exotic Caribbean resort, a beautiful city somewhere in Europe or any wonderful place just to get over the summer heat. Yet to us, who are so hooked up to Casino Gambling, summer is a thrilling ride for another gaming fun and adventure. So, where to this time? Vegas, Atlanta or maybe somewhere international, huh? If you’re not into traveling this time, you can also have everything at your home PC. But anyway, before you start to indulge yourself into the many luxuries of Casino Gambling, you might want to think twice about firmly setting your limits this time. All right! Maybe, you already tried before and it didn’t work. But hey! Keep on trying.

A lot of people visit different casinos all year round. Whether it be in a gambling capital such as Las Vegas or simply at their home, many Americans simply cannot do without casino games. Well, this is not surprising. Casino gambling may mean you’re risking a pot of cash. Yet the betting game and tension, plus the thought of possibly winning the jackpot prize can also be your most exciting adventure ever. Of course, if you bag the gold, the experience becomes more immense.

If you’re too stressed out or bored with your work and daily routine, you definitely need to stretch out yourself and relax. Casino gambling is a great way to release all the tensions in your mind and body. When you visit a real casino, of course, the best part is your being able to enjoy the other facilities, comforts, luxuries, and entertainment offered by the gambling place.

Each time you are enticed by the thrills and fun of casino games, you need to remind yourself though about your limits. Remember the cardinal rule for gamblers? Control, control, and control! Otherwise, you’ll end up empty handed. Worse is that you can literally get hooked with casino gambling. There’s a thin line between moderate gamblers and addicts. Often, many people are too blinded by the excitement that they fail to realize they have already crossed the line. Well, not until their life starts to crumble. For, even a single night of fun can turn into a nightmare the next morning. If you haven’t been careful enough with your bets, then don’t get surprised when you’re confronted by debts the following day.

Casino games are definitely fun and relaxing, for that is their purpose – entertainment. Yet they can also be addictive especially when they are abused. Too often, it’s difficult to tell when you start to become a Casino Gambling addict. Of course, when family members or friends begin to remind you of your gambling, then it’s probably time to check yourself. Of course, do it soon before the addiction devours you and your life. Gambling addiction is also a root of many other problems in the society such as crimes and broken families. If you think you are one or if you know somebody addicted to gambling, do your responsibility of breaking the habit before it starts to break lives and families. Casino gambling is definitely relaxing and entertaining. It eases you from all tensions and pressures. Yet remember, you must always do it with great responsibility.

After one more year Thorp published a book (I mentioned it at the beginning of the article) in which he rather in details, in the form comprehensible to any even a slightly literate and sensible person, set the rules of formation of a winning strategy. But the publication of the book did not only cause a quick growth of those willing to enrich themselves at the cost of gambling houses’ owners, as well as allowed the latter ones to understand the main reason of effectiveness of the developed by Thorp strategy.

First of all, casinos’ owners understood at last that it was necessary to introduce the following obligatory point into the rules of the game: cards are to be thoroughly shuffled after each game! If this rule is rigorously observed, then a winning strategy of Thorp cannot be applied, since the calculation of probabilities of extracting one or another card from a pack was based on the knowledge of the fact that some cards would already not appear in the game!

But what does it mean to have thoroughly shuffled” cards? Usually in gambling houses the process of thoroughly shuffling” presupposes the process when a croupier, one of the gamblers or, that is still oftener seen of late, a special automatic device makes a certain number of more or less monotonous movements with a pack (the number of which varies from 10 to 20-25, as a rule). Each of these movements changes the arrangement of cards in a pack. As mathematicians say, as a result of each movement with cards a kind of substitution” is made. But is it really so that as a result of such 10-25 movements a pack is thoroughly shuffled, and in particular, if there are 52 cards in a pack then a probability of the fact that, for instance, an upper card will appear to be a queen will be equal to 1/13? In other words, if we will, thus, for example, shuffle cards 130 times, then the quality of our shuffling will turn out to be more thorough” if the number of times of the queen’s appearance on top out of these 130 times will be closer to 10.

Strictly mathematically it is possible to prove that in case our movements appear to be exactly similar (monotonous) then such a method of shuffling cards is not satisfactory. At this it is still worse if the so called “order of substitution” is less, i.e. less is the number of these movements (substitutions) after which the cards are located in the same order they were from the start of a pack shuffling. In fact, if this number equals to t, then repeating exactly similar movements any number of times we, for all our wish, can not get more t different positioning of cards in a pack, or, using mathematical terms, not more t different combinations of cards.

Certainly, in reality, shuffling of cards does not come down to recurrence of the same movements. But even if we assume that a shuffling person (or an automatic device) makes casual movements at which there can appear with a certain probability all possible arrangements of cards in a pack at each single movement, the question of “quality” of such mixing turns out to be far from simple. This question is especially interesting from the practical point of view that the majority of notorious crooked gamblers achieve phenomenal success using the circumstance, that seemingly “careful shuffling” of cards actually is not such!

Mathematics helps to clear a situation with regard to this issue as well. In the work Gambling and Probability Theory” A.Reni presents mathematical calculations allowing him to draw the following practical conclusion: ” If all movements of a shuffling person are casual, so, basically, while shuffling a pack there can be any substitution of cards, and if the number of such movements is large enough, reasonably it is possible to consider a pack “carefully reshuffled”. Analyzing these words, it is possible to notice, that, firstly, the conclusion about “quality” of shuffling has an essentially likelihood character (“reasonably”), and, secondly, that the number of movements should be rather large (A.Reni prefers not to consider a question of what is understood as “rather a large number”). It is clear, however, that the necessary number at least a sequence higher than those 10-25 movements usually applied in a real game situation. Besides, it is not that simple “to test” movements of a shuffling person (let alone the automatic device) for “accidence”!

Summing it all up, let’s come back to a question which has been the headline of the article. Certainly, it would be reckless to think that knowledge of maths can help a gambler work out a winning strategy even in such an easy game like twenty-one. Thorp succeeded in doing it only by using imperfection (temporary!) of the then used rules. We can also point out that one shouldn’t expect that maths will be able to provide a gambler at least with a nonlosing strategy. But on the other hand, understanding of mathematical aspects connected with gambling games will undoubtedly help a gambler to avoid the most unprofitable situations, in particular, not to become a victim of fraud as it takes place with the problem of cards shuffling”, for example. Apart from that, an impossibility of creation of a winning strategy for all “cases” not in the least prevents a mathematically advanced” gambler to choose whenever possible the best” decision in each particular game situation and within the bounds allowed by “Dame Fortune” not only to enjoy the very process of the Game, as well as its result.

Thorp managed to find out that owners of gambling houses gave their officials rather strict directions with regard to the strategies which they should stick to in the game with visitors. Control over fulfillment of these directions had its initial aim to prevent from a frame-up of a croupier with the rest of the gamblers, a chance of which could not be excluded. Assigned for a croupier strict rules determining his game strategy really substantially reduced a probability of such a frame-up, but on the other hand, allowed an advanced” gambler to rather adequately reveal the essence of this strategy and effectively oppose it. For unlike a croupier a gambler needn’t show the first of the received cards, as well as isn’t enchained by any strict rules as regards his strategy, that is why flexibly changing his behavior he can confuse a croupier. For example, Thorp found out that practically in all gambling houses of Nevada State croupiers were strictly ordered to keep away from a widow in case the amount of points in his cards exceeded or was equal to 17, and a player, from our mathematician’s point of view did not have to miss an opportunity to make use of the knowledge of even some aspects of a croupier’s strategy for achievement of his aims. Thus, those advantages which had an official of a gambling house from the start (as we already know, he is not obliged to open his cards at the end of the game), can be compensated to a certain degree for the knowledge of a player about the strategic “tunnel vision” of a croupier.

Besides, as has been mentioned, Thorp, while building his strategy presumed that cards were not often shuffled, in particular, if after finishing of a regular game there were still cards left in a pack, a croupier did not collect the thrown-away by the gamblers cards but dealt them anew (and the next game was played), and only after complete exhaustion of a pack, an official of a gambling house collected all the cards, thoroughly shuffled them and a new cycle” began. Naturally, if a gambler had a good memory he could change his strategy depending on the knowledge of the cards which had gone out of the game, and what cards could still be counted upon. It is important to remember that a croupier himself who was to strictly follow the directions of the casino’s owners practically without changing his strategy!

Thorp set himself a task to formulate the rules which would allow him to calculate probabilities of taking out one or another card out of an incomplete pack. Knowing these probabilities a gambler could already with reasonable assurance draw cards from the widow without being too much afraid of a pip out”, and besides, on the basis of the knowledge of some aspects of a croupier’s strategy to make suppositions about those cards which he had, and other gamblers as well. Naturally, as a gambler was to make a decision with regard to a widow very quickly, the sought rules for calculation of probabilities were to be rather simple for a gambler to be able to use them in mind” with the help of neither a calculator, nor a pen and paper (even if we suppose that a gambler will be given a chance to do calculation on paper, it will certainly arise suspicion). Edward Thorp managed to solve this mathematical problem having created rather simple algorithms for calculation of probabilities of taking out of one or another card from a pack, and using them to build a strategy of the game of twenty-one which would not be very complicated, allowing a gambler to considerably increase his chances of winning!

As the Hungarian mathematician A.Reni states after a few days of presenting his report on the obtained results at the meeting of the American Maths Society in 1960 in Washington Thorp received from a businessman a letter with a check for 1 thousand dollars intended for checking of a winning strategy in practice. Thorp accepted the check and having learnt the formulated by him rules left for Nevada to try his discovery. The trial went well: less than after two hours Thorp won 17 thousand dollars.

Needless to say, the owner of a gambling house didn’t share Thorp and his companion’s delight with regard to a successful comeout of the trial and the next day did his best to prevent Thorp from joining in the game. Later on Thorp tried to penetrate into other gambling houses, but the news of him had already spread far and wide, so that the doors of all the gambling houses appeared to be closed for him. Several times having adjusted a fake beard or having got a make up of a Chinese, Thorp managed to get to the gaming-table, but in any disguise his constant gain invariably gave him away. Thorp had to refuse from further checking of the strategy developed by him”. Though “additional checks” were necessary” only to enrich the pockets of the talented mathematician. One could hardly doubt that E.Thorp managed to create a real winning strategy!

However, since he could no longer benefit from his discovery himself, he decided to render welfare assistance” to his colleagues having published in 1961 a small article in an American academic journal (Thorp E.O. “A favourable strategy for twenty-one”, Proc.Nat.Acad.Sci., 47, 110-112, (1961)). And despite the small size of the article and, consequently, an extremely condensed form of persentment, made it comprehensible for rather a narrow group of professionals, one can be sure that a number of American scientists and their friends certainly “improved” their material situation (owners of gambling houses were unlikely to read scientific magazines at that time).

There’s a lot of available games to play inside a casino whenever somebody wants to go Casino Gambling. A gambler could pick to play card games, roulettes, and other games that have evolved over time. But among these, slot machines remain to be one of the favorites of people who love Casino Gambling.

Slot machines have been around almost instantaneously as casinos. The very first machine was created in 1887. It featured the commonly known configuration of the machine. This one-armed bandit” was also able to feature an automated system that enabled it to simplify the payout mechanism of the machine. This became popular and soon found its way into every local bar or saloon at that time. Thus, possibly initiating the beginning of Casino Gambling.

Today, variations in the popular machine have become an act of creativity for its developers. Different machines come up with very different themes. The variations could go as creative as using pirate themes, geometric shapes, just to name a few. This is probably the reason why in Britain, slot machines are more commonly called as the fruit machines”. But whatever theme developers might come up with, the basic principle behind it still remains. The characters and the number of lines might change, but nevertheless, they still follow the original game structuring of its origin. It adds to the flavor of course, that Casino Gambling people are able to enjoy the machines they are betting on, given that they have evolved to become more fun.

The development of the slot machine did not come without myths surrounding it. Some Casino Gambling people believe that certain machines become either hot” or cold”, depending on the number hits or wins a particular machine has given. Although myths such as this have crept its way throughout different places, the odds of winning on a standard slot machine is determined by an RNG or Random Number Generator. This means that on standardized machines, the odds of winning is always the same.

There are however, some machines that are specifically programmed to increase the probability of winning. Depending on the state laws that govern a particular casino, Casino Gambling on slot machines are required to give out what is called a payout percentage. Usually, the payout percentage is somewhere between 82 to 98 percent. But in the case of Nevada where state laws are not the same as others, the baseline payout percentage of machines is set to 75. This means that supposing one spin costs $1, after 1,000,000 spins have been played, the machine should have at least returned an average of $750,000 to the players. And so goes for other machines that have a different payout percentage set.

Other machines that are commonly seen when going Casino Gambling are those that give out huge jackpot prizes. The machines that could give out as much as $7,000,000, are linked in a network of different machines. The network could also extend to other casinos, enabling a link between one casino’s slot machines and the other’s. However, because of the large jackpot prize being allotted by these systems, the usual case is that the payout percentage is smaller than the one from a single machine.

Casino Gambling is still predominantly based on probability. Although this is sometimes preset by programs that are usually required by state laws, the odds of winning on a slot machine and any other Casino Gambling endeavor still requires a certain amount of luck to pull off.

When someone plays a game, they play to win. One of the many simple games at the casino is Blackjack. For those who don’t know how to play the game, it’s always best to start by learning the basics.

When playing Blackjack the most important feature to remember is that there are four times as many cards that have a value of 10 (10, J,Q,K) as any other value. With this information, one must always assume that the next card to be drawn from the deck has a value of 10.

By keeping this in mind, one may realize that if one has any hand that has a value over 12 one will likely lose or in blackjack terms bust (go over 21). Likewise if the dealer’s card is a 2-6 it is likely to draw a 10 card which means he will have to draw again, likely causing him to bust.

Another way to make the odds more favorable to the player than the dealer is by counting cards. This of course requires many pages and charts that must be memorized. Having a professionally written guide is very helpful and there are many different authors that have different styles and different counting systems. It’s always best to get more than one opinion to find out which style works best.

Practice makes perfect. By investing time and money with online training software learning the game, it will eventually pay off at the casino.

Upon entering the casino, one must choose the right table to play at. When one observes that the players at a table seem to be winning a lot, it is a good time to join in the action. Likewise, if you notice the dealer has a lot of chips and the players seem to be doing more losing than winning, then look for a better table.

Reward the dealer by tipping when one is winning. If the dealer knows he will be tipped when the players wins, he may begin rooting and actually do subtle things to help such as performing less thorough shuffles and penetrating deeper into the shoe before he re-shuffles thus allowing the player to get a more accurate count of the cards.

Though if the dealer starts losing too much money for the casino the pit boss will likely change dealers.

Although it may be impossible to find the perfect game, one should be familiar with how certain house rules affect the player.

Keep in mind that as a rule of thumb, the fewer decks the casino uses the more advantageous it is for the player.